I was contacted by David late in 2012 to tell me
about the beavers that were living free in the Tay River catchment in
Scotland, and which he said were under threat of removal by Scottish National
Heritage (SNH) as their presence was considered to be unauthorised. David was
shrewd enough to know he was dangling in front of me the opportunity for an
article about these beaver. He put me on to Louise and Paul who were
organising local opposition against the capture, their motivation coming from
having experience of keeping beaver in an enclosure on their estate (1). They
would shortly found the Scottish Wild Beavers Group (SWBG) as an action group
to monitor beaver in the Tay catchment, and to lobby for their continued
presence as an opportunity to study dispersal and impact (2). While official
attention was mostly focussed on the authorised trial release of beaver in
Knapdale, the repeated failure of SNH to capture and remove the Tay beavers,
plus the cogent arguments being put forward by SWBG and their actions in
exposing the low population count assumed by SNH, resulted in a decision by
the Scottish Government that the Tay beavers would be left in place and
monitored until the end of the Knapdale beaver trial in 2015 (2). A decision
would then be made about the future re-introduction of beavers to Scotland as
a whole.

We don’t encourage lethal control

The clamour for a cull of the Tay beavers grew more strident,
a key issue of discussion being whether the free-living beaver would be covered by
the strict protection afforded by the EU Habitats Directive and, even then,
would there be an allowance under that Directive for managing beaver in
circumstances where there were impacts on public health, public safety, or for
other reasons of overriding public interest, including those of a social or
economic nature (2). Some in the rural communities where beaver had
distributed took no notice of any legal or moral imperative, blaming beaver
for flooding, but cutting down all the trees and bushes along watercourses to
deny beaver a foothold, and slaughtering beaver with impunity (3). The best an
SNH manager could come up with in response to the evidence of this slaughter
was “We don’t encourage lethal control”(4)

It took until November 2016 for the Scottish
Government to make the momentous decision that the beavers in Scotland were
there to stay and be allowed to expand their range naturally (5,6). While
pointing out that this was the first time a mammal had been officially
reintroduced to the UK, the overall tenor of the press release was about
active management – “Species set to receive protection, but will require
careful management” (6). This management, it explained, was by way of
techniques up to and including lethal control that were available under the
Habitats Regulations. It noted that work had begun to ensure beavers would be
added to Scotland’s list of protected species, which required completion of a
Habitats Regulations Assessment and a Strategic Environmental Assessment, and
thus implying that protection under the Directive would be contingent on the
two assessments. There was also a commitment from the Scottish Government that
advice and assistance would be provided to farmers in helping them implement
mitigation and prevention measures. Some interim advice on beaver management
was provided almost a year later, and which stated that SNH "strongly
discouraged lethal control" (7). However, the advice primarily covered highly
interventionist measures like removing a lodge, blocking a burrow, and
“humane dispatch”. Advice was provide for the latter on firearms and
munitions, and offered this cynical wheeze that the tendency of beavers to
“repair dams that have been breached makes the position of the beaver more
predictable and allows for a stable firing position at an appropriate range”.
Clearly, there would be no inhibition amongst rural communities to continue
with their absolute intolerance of the presence of beaver, rather than
learning to tolerate a certain amount of beaver influence on their land (3,8).

In late 2017, the Scottish Government announced
that the two assessments had been carried out, but that it was to consult over
a three-month period on whether the Environmental Report of the Strategic
Environmental Assessment had correctly identified potential impacts and
appropriate mitigation measures in the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland
(9). A Government policy statement provided a summary of events to that point,
and then laid out the final requirement of a Scottish Statutory Instrument
that was needed to put in place protection for beavers by adding them to
Schedule 2 of the Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c.) Regulations 1994 so
that they became a European Protected Species (10). It noted that it would
then be an offence to kill or injure any beaver, or deliberately disturb a
beaver during breeding or rearing periods, and that the breeding and resting
places of beavers would also be protected. There then followed something that
should at least have been in place and widely publicised when the announcement
was made of the acceptance of reinstatement of beaver, if not before. The
Scottish Government called on land managers to exercise restraint in managing
beavers until they were given fully protected status. Advice could be sought
from SNH, but that land managers were to proceed as though legal protection
was in place. However, if there was evidence that this advice was not being
followed on a particular landholdings, there would be the option for a
Scottish Ministers to issue Nature Conservation Orders. These Orders may
prohibit specified activities in specified areas and at specified times,
including it was suggested prohibiting the shooting of beavers (11). Breach of
such an Order is a criminal offence with a fine of up to £40,000 under summary
procedure and an unlimited fine on indictment (12). At last there would appear
from then on to have been some force behind the weak imprecation not to cull
these beaver (see above). However, these orders refer to activities only in
designated protected areas (11) and, while the River Tay Special Area of
Conservation may have covered most of the beaver colonies, it would be hard to
use these orders to forestall culling those beaver that may have distributed
outside of it (13). I see no evidence anyway that any Nature Conservation
Orders had been issued in respect of beaver being killed (14-16).

Lethal control is a last resort when all other mitigation
methods have been exhausted

Recognising that this was a really critical
moment for beavers in Scotland, SWBG reminded all of its contacts in
mid-February of the consultation, and its deadline in early March 2018, in an
effort to bolster a high and positive response. To make responding to the five
questions easier, a summary was provided of the answers that SWBG had given to
the consultation (17). After reading those and the consultation documents
provided, I submitted my response, but confined the detail of my comments to
the question of whether the re-introduction policy and the Environmental
Report had correctly identified the potential impacts and appropriate
mitigation (18). It seemed to me that natural justice required that the de
facto reinstatement of beaver to parts of its former native range in Scotland
be given official recognition, and that their presence be legally protected
(19). Given the distributive nature of wild animals, the policy was correct in
accepting and allowing beaver to expand their range naturally. I was less
happy about the wording in the Policy Statement that beavers should be
actively managed to minimise adverse impacts on farmers and other land owners,
and that the Scottish Government aimed to promote proactive management of
beavers to mitigate negative impacts on land use activities (10). While an
explanation was eventually given in the Policy Statement that many management
actions could be carried out with no adverse effects on animal welfare, and
without any need for a licence, the terms used of active/proactive management
would always be associated with population control by lethal means, and which
is never the intention of providing exceptions to strict protection.

I felt there also needed to be more clarity
about what actions would need to licenced. The Policy Statement implied that
actions that would otherwise be unlawful under the regulations (e.g. killing,
trapping, destruction of dams or lodges) could be carried out under licence
from SNH for specified purposes, including protection of crops, livestock,
timber or public health (10). However, it noted that before a licence could be
issued, the EU Habitats Directive required SNH to be satisfied that there was
no satisfactory alternative to the requested intervention and that the action
would not have a detrimental effect on the conservation status of the species.
The Environmental Report was even less clear in distinguishing between what it
called “generic” management and the licenced approaches to practical
measures for mitigation, when only physical removal and exclusion were seen to
require an SNH licence (Sections 5.3 & 5.4 in (18)). I noted that there
claimed to have been development of a fit-for-purpose scheme of licensing
appropriate derogations to enable legal management that can reduce or
eliminate impacts from beaver activity, and that this would be available when
legal protection is enacted (table 5.7.1 in (18)) The latter was also the case
for when there would be guidance from SNH on appropriate techniques to manage
for the presence of beavers, or eliminate or reduce unwanted impacts (table
5.7.1 in (18)). I felt it would have been much better if, in the first case,
there had been some indication of the outline structure of the licensing
scheme within the documents presented for the consultation. Moreover, it would
have been important to stress again, as was noted in the Policy Statement,
that under the rules for derogation in the Habitats Directive, lethal control
is a last resort when all other mitigation methods have been exhausted.

There was an interesting and valuable exercise
in the Environmental Report of assessing the benefits and risks of four
alternative policy scenarios: full removal of beavers from the wild; allowing
beavers to expand from their current range, but restricting movement into
specific catchments to keep them free of beaver; widespread colonisation that
could eventually include new release sites outside of the existing two; and
accelerated colonisation where proposals for new releases could be considered
immediately (Section 6.1 in (18)). I recommended a bold approach to a positive
future for beaver in its natural range in Scotland through the choice of
option 3, and which was one of the two options – 2 and 3 - that had informed
the policy agreed by Scottish Minister. I think my reason for choosing option
3 rather than option 4 was to allow some time for a greater shakeout in
attitudes to the existence of beaver; that tolerance might flourish with
greater familiarity; and that land users would accept the public
responsibility of having a protected species on their land.

A complete absence of fresh beaver signs

In the short run, that was a naïve expectation
on my part, as SWBG were reported in a newspaper article in June 2018, a few
months after the consultation ended, that it had “hard evidence” of
“systematic shootings” of beaver in the local area; that farmers and
landowners in Tayside had already started killing beavers on their land and
neighbouring waterways (20). Disappointment was expressed by SWBG at the
length of time it was taking in granting beavers legal protection; that the
delay potentially exposed dependent kits to a slow death by starvation in
their burrows if their lactating mothers were shot during another breeding
season of April to September when female beavers may have dependent young. The
Chairman of National Farmers Union (NFU) Scotland’s Environment and Land Use
committee was quoted as saying that it was imperative that any beaver colony
was properly managed so that its addition to the landscape did not negatively
affect agricultural practices and land use. There is no nuance here, just a
sense of entitlement, the implication being that farmers wanted to exercise
population management, rather than the sliding scale of measures in mitigation
that was the approach in the Environmental Report (Sections 5.3 & 5.4 in
(18)). Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perthshire South and
Kinross-shire, confirmed that measures would be put in place to safeguard the
growing population of beavers later this year, and that a survey on changes to
the distribution and density of the wild beaver population in Scotland between
2012 and 2018 would be published by SNH also later this year. The article
offered that it was thought that as many as 100 beaver were now living in
Tayside.

Within a week of each other in mid-October, two
reports came out on Scottish beaver, the first being that report on a survey
of the change in beaver distribution and population, although Cunningham had
been misleading in that it was focussed solely on beavers originating in the
Tay catchment (21) and the second was an analysis of responses to the
consultation on the Environmental Report (22). The survey report noted that a
previous survey conducted in 2012 had estimated there were 38-39 groups of
beavers present in the Tay catchment, equating to approximately 146 individual
beavers (range 106 - 187)(21). The newspaper article (above) must have been
working on those figures from 2012 when it said that as many as 100 beaver
were now living in Tayside, because this new survey identified that there were
114 active beaver territorial zones, giving a conservatively estimated number
of approximately 433 beavers (range 319 – 547). This is a stunning increase in
both beaver distribution and density compared to the 2012 survey, and with
evidence that beavers were spreading beyond the Tay catchment and into the
Forth catchment from Loch Achray in the Trossachs, parts of River Teith and
Devon, to the main stem of Forth River near Stirling (see Fig. 13b & Fig. 15b
in (21)). However, there was disturbing evidence of a spatial variability in
terms of areas of change, as indicated by around ten areas that exhibited a
decreased field sign density compared to the 2012 survey, and in some cases a
complete absence of fresh beaver signs indicating that beaver were no longer
present (see Fig. 14 in (21)). These negative changes in densities of signs
were in parts of the lower River Earn and River Isla, and which are associated
with prime agricultural land-use. The survey reports authors ventured that
these areas of seeming habitat abandonment were potentially the result of
culling – “culling in some areas has undoubtedly removed animals and
therefore created vacant territories” (21). They noted that such activity
had prevented the carrying capacity for beaver being reached so that there was
no population dynamic that would cause a burgeoning young population to
redistribute into new territories. Instead, a response to this culling could
lead to beaver changing their reproductive patterns through breeding as
yearlings rather than as two-year olds.

As you may expect, this disturbing potential
evidence of slaughter did not go unnoticed. Susan Davies, director of
conservation at the Scottish Wildlife Trust, said in a BBC News article -
"It is alarming that there are a number of areas where beavers are absent due
to unregulated culls. We believe it is time for the Scottish government to
complete the steps required to give beavers protected status. This was
promised at the end of 2016 but progress has been too slow. Granting legal
protection would ensure that beavers are allowed to thrive across Scotland"
(23). Davies was to make other important points elsewhere – “Until such
time that beavers receive protected status in Scotland this unregulated
culling will continue to limit the return of beavers and leads to some
concerns for animal welfare. Unfortunately progress in protecting beavers has
been too slow and has not matched the pace of their expanding range and
numbers” (24). You can get an idea of the slippage by the expectation
given in the first (and only?) Scottish Beaver Form newsletter that beavers
would become a European Protected Species in Scotland in 2017 (25). Given
instead this glacial pace of progress, I wonder if there is some feet dragging
by the Scottish Government because the imminent withdrawal of the UK from the
EU throws into confusion whether it is worth proceeding with European
Protected Species status? It begs the question though of what will be the
replacement in legislative protection for wild species.

Davies offered some practical insight into
measures for mitigation of beaver activity. She suggested that farmers,
foresters and other land managers could prepare for the return of beaver by
re-establishing or improving narrow strips of woodland habitat about 20m wide
along rivers – “These riparian strips would create a buffer between the
beavers preferred habitat and their land management activities. Steps can also
be taken to protect essential trees, crops or infrastructure. Forward thinking
land managers could also consider allowing small areas of land to be given
over to beaver wetland habitats that will in turn encourage a wide range of
biodiversity” (24). I noted above that there had been a commitment in the
Environmental report that there would be guidance from SNH on appropriate
techniques to manage for the presence of beavers, or eliminate or reduce
unwanted impacts. That this has still not seen the light of day is evident
from the BBC News article where Nick Halfhide, SNH director of sustainable
growth, is quoted as saying (yet again) that SNH would be setting up a scheme
to support farmers who are said to be angered by the damage beavers were
causing (23). This mitigation scheme would be based on input from a range of
interest groups such as NFU Scotland through the Scottish Beaver Forum, with
trial techniques being developed to help farmers deal with any problems they
encounter.

The majority of respondents (83%) agreed with the
reintroduction policy

That second report in October, on an analysis of
the consultation responses, reported that 533 had been received, most being
from individuals (494) as well as key stakeholder organisations (39)(22). The
majority of respondents (83%) agreed with the reintroduction policy that
beaver populations in Scotland should be allowed to remain, that they should
receive strong legal protection and were content that appropriate mitigation
measures had been identified. The main concern among those who disagreed with
the reintroduction policy was whether there would be long-term funding and a
management framework for the mitigation measures to support farmers and land
managers prevent serious damage to land uses (agriculture, forestry &
fisheries). Farmers and land managers also thought that the impacts of the
reintroduction policy had been underestimated within the report and that the
arable land in Tayside would be considerably affected by potential drain
blocking and flooding caused by beavers. A number of respondents noted that
there were no longer any natural predators in Scotland so that there would be
some circumstances when beaver management will be required. In a question that
I didn’t respond to, on whether there were any other environmental effects that
had not been considered, 87 out of the 332 respondents to this question
thought that the creation of riparian buffer zones with beaver wetlands could
provide a critical solution for the reduction of agricultural run-off in
intensely farmed areas.

I see no response yet from either the Scottish
Government, or from farming sector organisations like NFU Scotland, to the
analyses of responses to the consultation, although it is still early days yet
after its publication. One thing I hadn’t considered when I originally
responded to this consultation was that it did not necessarily seek to
delineate respondents by some stakeholder assignment, such as farmer, land
owner, land manager, a geographic association with the Tay catchment, or any
other affiliation that would separate the ordinary citizen like me from those
that would have direct experience of the impact of the beaver. As it was,
while the consultation did ask whether the response was from an organisation
or an individual, the analysis of responses made little effort to separate out
different stakeholders. NFU Scotland has a track record of resisting
legitimising the reintroduction of beavers in Tayside (26) and then arguing
for appropriate (robust) management to minimise the risk of unacceptable
impacts on agriculture and other land uses once it was decided that the Tay
beavers were there to stay (27). Given that, you would have thought that NFU
Scotland would have seized on the notion that the outcome of the consultation
was flawed as it is likely that an overwhelming proportion of respondents
didn’t have direct experience of beaver impact, nor that they would have to
deal with it.

Respondents are asked to assess chilling statements

I have written before about the privileged
opportunity for consultation that NFU members had in response to the trial
(re-)release of beavers into the River Otter in Devon (28). I was forwarded
very recently a webpage from Farmers Weekly that had a link to an astonishing
questionnaire on lynx reintroduction in Britain. I can’t find this webpage on
the Farmers Weekly website, and so I think it came by way of a subscriber’s
webpage, but I have since found a link to the survey on a dedicated Facebook
page (29). The survey is the usual strength of agreement/disagreement with a
set of statements, but it has a major assumption that it is primarily farmers
responding –“The aim of this study is to survey the views of UK farmers on
a potential reintroduction of Lynx to the UK” (30). It opens with these
contrasting, coupled statements:

‘I have positive feelings towards a potential
reintroduction of Lynx to the UK’

‘Having Lynx in the UK would be a bad thing’

‘It is important for future generations to have
Lynx in the UK’

‘The UK's natural environment would benefit from
the presence of lynx’

‘Lynx would harm the UK’s farming community’

‘I would be afraid of walking in the countryside
if Lynx were present’

‘I am knowledgeable about Lynx’

The second section of statements is prefaced on
an assumption that I have never heard or seen articulated in any official
arena. Thus it says that “To conserve the reintroduced Lynx, the species
would be listed as a game species, with an open hunting season (an annual
period when restrictions on the culling of certain types of wildlife are
lifted)”. This is certainly not the case for lynx under the strict
protection that would be afforded by the EU Habitats Directive, in the same
way that it is for beaver (Articles 3 &13, Annexes II & IV in (31)).
Respondents are then asked to assess the following, chilling statements,
imagining that this hypothetical scenario of lynx reintroduction had occurred
in the UK. Note the differentiation between farming
and non-farming community:

‘If Lynx were present in my area, they would
kill my farm animals’

‘If Lynx were killing my farm animals, culling
Lynx would be an effective way of protecting my farm animals’

‘In the scenario mentioned earlier, protecting
my farm animals from Lynx would be a high priority compared with other jobs on
my farm’

‘Culling Lynx would be beneficial for my farm’

‘In this scenario, my local farming
community would approve of me culling Lynx’

Behaving how my local farming community
expects me to is important to me’

‘In this scenario, my local non-farming
community would approve of me culling Lynx’

‘Behaving how my local non-farming
community expects me to is important to me’

‘In this scenario, I would feel under social
pressure to cull Lynx’

‘I have access to a gun’

‘Having access to a gun would enable me to cull
Lynx’

‘I have access to poison’

'Having access to poison would enable me to cull
Lynx’

‘I have access to traps’

‘Having access to traps would enable me to cull
Lynx’

‘I am confident that I could successfully cull
Lynx if I wanted to’

‘In this scenario I would cull Lynx’

I would be interested in what reaction you may
have to this ever articulated right, this entitlement that rural communities
assert over population control of inconvenient species? Can there ever be a
legitimate exception to strict protection that will always satisfy rural
communities in Britain? Will farmers and land users ever understand that the
reason behind strict protection is to allow reinstated or existing endangered
species to reach what is termed Favourable Conservation Status, indicating
that they are occupying their natural range and in numbers that ensures long
term survival (see Article 1.e in (31)).

The auguries above are not good, and are
reinforced by a recent report from Finland that analysed the wolf hunting
permits granted during the years 2016–2017 by the Finnish Wildlife Agency that
were allowed as exceptions (derogations) from strict protection (32). The
licenced mitigation activity of killing beaver would be the same thing (see
above). The report wanted to establish if all plausible non-lethal
alternatives were being effectively considered and implemented by the Finnish
authorities before hunting permits were granted. The short answer is that the
effort to seek alternative methods had been weak, especially so in the
willingness to approve alternatives to mitigate social harm such as fear. The
latter was one of the main reasons for applying for a wolf hunting permit in
Southern Finland, each permit seeking the killing of one or two wolves. Don’t
you think it odd that a fear of wolves is legitimising their culling, even
though the report noted that no person had been killed by wolves for over a
century in Finland? The report also noted that the Finnish wolf population had
not yet reached favourable conservation status, which argued that exceptions
from protection should not lightly be approved. It also raised the issue of
poaching (illegal hunting) of wolves. It was considered that the ministerial
decree on hunting had intimated that legitimation of culling through
exceptions would result in greater social acceptance and less illegal hunting.
The authors asserted that it was questionable whether the status of the wolf
in Finland was improved by this liberalising of derogation-based hunting –
“tolerance hunting” - when the opposite may well be true, as there was
evidence that granting management flexibility for endangered species to
address the illegal behaviour of poaching may promote such behaviour and lead
instead to increased illegal hunting.

A solution that is independent of licencing

Given that some land users in Scotland have been
slaughtering out beaver with impunity, irrespective of the repeated weak
inculcations from SNH not to do so, will they go through the rigours of
applying for a licence once beaver are strictly protected, when it is highly
likely that the circumstances they cite in justification wouldn’t meet the
criteria? Would a certain liberalisation of licence granting assuage these
people that they had some control over beaver populations? What will be the
replacement in legislative protection after the UK leaves the EU?

Here’s a solution that is independent of
licencing. Unlike farmers, wolves don’t need a licence to go hunting beaver
- a recent review of predation of beavers by wolves observed that during the
ice-free season, beavers were vulnerable to predation and can be the primary
or secondary prey of wolves (33). Higher beaver abundance can increase wolf
pup survival, as well as being a substitute prey for wolves during periods of
reduced ungulate abundance. The reinstatement of wolves to free living here
will, of course, plunge us straight back into the issue of tolerance, and you
can imagine the outcry of farmers in needing to feel that they can control the
wolf population. Would there be greater tolerance of the presence of wolves if
farmers were allowed to trap and shoot them? If there is a will to reinstate
former native species, as there was with the beaver, then what has happened
with the Tayside beavers shows that we just aren’t sufficiently ready as an
island to accept other free living and ranging former native species. We never
will be if our system of authorising releases for reinstatement by statutory
agencies are reactive to piecemeal applications, rather than being proactive
their selves in taking a national view that assumes responsibility for the
preparedness in accepting those reinstatements.

Mark Fisher 31 October 2018

(1) The Tayside beavers - living wild and free
in Scotland, Self-willed land December 2012